Aspiration
Virginia Postrel and her collaborators’ new blog is now live for real. Interestingly, if not surprisingly, they chose a purple color scheme. (I wonder what cemented purple in the imaginations of so many world cultures as the color of royal exclusivity and aspiration.) For some reason, the blog reminded me of this Kylie video:
The video isn’t dominated by purple–though it is shocking pink + blue, so it’s one shade of purple split into its components. But it does have a female aviator suspended in glamourous unattainability, and it has dreamy wisps of smoke in the external shots of the spaceship. And it’s an excuse to post about Kylie, which I can never resist anyway.
Apparently, purple dye was really expensive in ancient Rome because it was made by this special process involving thousands of the exact right type of crushed molluscs. And they had rules about who could wear how much purple on their togas.